Starbound Character Wipes Will Cease After Next Patch

It still amazes me when a product can move more than a million units and not have a marketing budget. It speaks volumes to the amount of support and community attachment the product has when it can make such an unfathomable leap into the realm of success. Any business analyst would likely tell you that such a thing doesn't exist, and yet in the weird and always fascinating eco-sphere of the video game arena that's exactly what happened with Chucklefish's Starbound.

The thing is, Starbound's beta launch comes with all the cursory problems you would expect from a beta build, including fixes that wipe all of your play-data. Well, the days of character wipes may be coming to an end, as Chucklefish's latest planned patch for the game will bring a cessation to character wipes.

Blues picked up a post from PCGamesN where they roll out details on Chucklefish's latest patch notes on the official Starbound website, which includes this very reassuring, though possibly upsetting bit of news...

“Of course, there’s also the highly anticipated/possibly feared final character wipe– this patch contains a fix for save files so after this, you won’t need to worry about our patches destroying your characters or ships. This patch will wipe everything– characters, ships and worlds. It will definitely be the last time we’ll need to wipe characters or ships, and will hopefully be the last time we’ll need to wipe worlds.”

Hey look, I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of why character wipes happen, or what the patch will do to ensure that they don't need to happen again, but it is safe to say that the character wipes will no longer need to happen with future patches.

For people who have been leery about getting involved with Early Access games for this very reason, you're right to hold off on a purchase. Starting a game and getting acquainted with a character and their space ship as they travel across the galaxy to countless biomes can become quite the frustrating experience when your little General Lick Bronies gets deleted along with his horse-shaped ship.

Thankfully, following this latest patch from the team at Chucklefish, you'll be able to ride the star-dust manes of the galactic universe without worrying about your character or ship getting the 'ole heave-ho when subsequent patches drop.

So far, though, most gamers seem to be okay with knowing that their adventures are temporary up until the latest patch arrives. There's also some pretty big warnings on the main store page and scattered all throughout the forums to let people know that Starbound is still in Early Access beta and that your adventures aren't guaranteed to be saved or permanent for very long.

You can join in on the action right now (if you so dare) for only $15, though, be warned that the game is still in Early Access. The game is hailed as the bigger, badder, more luxurious older sibling of Terraria... in space.

For more info you can learn more about the game by paying a kind visit to the official website. The game is also scheduled to release on the PS Vita and PS4 as soon as the beta phase is complete.